Leo Bud Welch – Live At The Iridium
Format: CD / Label: Cleopatra Records
Releasedatum: 31 maart 2017

Tekst: Iain Patience

Leo Bud Welch is a southern bluesman who has been playing blues and making music with his guitar for something over sixty years now. A Mississippi logger for most of his working life, he was once offered an audition to join the band of BB King, an offer he had to refuse because he simply couldn’t afford the travel costs involved in a visit to Memphis, Tennessee. Now in his eighties, he is one of the last ol’ bluesmen still standing, gigging and touring and occasionally recording albums that are eerily raw, emotive things with touches of his edgy fretwork underpinning them alongside his rough-hewn voice.

‘Live At The Iridium’ is his third release in the past five years and a suitable showcase for his unfettered by fashion approach to the music he so clearly loves. Recorded live at New York’s iconic Iridium Jazz and Blues Club, it features a range of material that is fairly and squarely blues with attitude and feeling and an undercurrent of the gospel tradition that Welch himself embraced for many years.

The seventeen tracks include remarkably raw takes on Got My Mojo Working, Rollin’ And Tumblin’ and Good Mornin’ Little School Girl, all of them delivered with enormous emotion and real-deal depth and understanding. This is true, old-school blues, delivered by a guy who has been there and done pretty much it all over the course of a sixty-five year love with the music. Welch is a true deep-southerner with his roots firmly planted in the North Mississippi Hill Country of his birth. ‘Live at the Iridium’ is an excellent example of genuine old-school blues played by one of the last true, old-generation bluesmen still standing.

Tracks:
01. Praise His Name
02. Still A Fool
03. Got My Mojo Working
04. Five Long Years
05. No More Doggin’
06. Woke Up This Morning
07. My Babe
08. Sweet Little Angel
09. Cadillac Baby
10. Po Boy
11. You Don’t Have To Go
12. Pepticon
13. Don’t Let The Devil Ride
14. Rollin’ & Tumblin’
15. Good Morning, Little School Girl
16. Walkin’ The Floor Over You
17. Me And My Lord
18. Sweet Home Chicago
19. Dust My Broom
20. If You Don’t Like My Peaches
21. 3 O’clock Blues
22. Country Road
23. Hi-Heel Sneakers
24. A Long Journey

Website: Leo Bud Welch


Ook op Blues Magazine ...